Hyderabad: The first long-weekend of the year appeared promising for techies to fill it with lot of time to relax, travel and exercise. With Republic Day falling on Friday, Cyberabad techies were gearing up for a three-day weekend of cyclathons, trekkathons and road trips.
Several techies would be participating in the Hyderabad Cyclathon being organised by Hyderabad Bicycling Club (HBC). Club member Abhinandan Malhotra said, “We are conducting the cyclathon with theme ‘Celebrate – healthier life style this year’.
A large number of techies have registered from Novartis and CA Technologies, while several others software engineers from Infosys, Capgemini, Bank of America, Wipro, Deloitte and nearby IT companies are participating in the 60-km ride.
With techies addicted to urban lifestyle, HBC intended to connect them with village lifestyle by riding through Bakaram village with flower beds on both sides.
BRC Community resident Neha Qadri said, “There are several cycling enthusiasts in my community. We are embarking on the cyclathon. Most of them are techies, and this is going to be our first 60-km cyclathon. We have done 10 km and 30 km before.”
Members of start-up community would be trekking at Ananthagiri this weekend on Sunday. It was being organised by T-hub where participants would be sharing stories of start-up life, the ups and downs, apart from exploring.
Mr Vitor Monteiro of T-hub, who is co-coordinating the trekkathon, said, “This is the first time members of startup community will be meeting and bonding on a trek. There are entrepreneurs, employees of startups, employees of T-hub, interns and workers.
We will be trekking, exploring, interacting with nature and there is a bonfire. There are a lot of first-timers to trek which is pretty exciting.”
Some techies who could not make it to their hometown on Sankranti as it was a short weekend were making the most of the long weekend. Nikhil Chamarty of HSBC said, “I couldn’t travel home last week, so I packed my bags on Thursday to my hometown Vishakapatnam.”
According to Travelyaari, a bus booking platform, there was an increase in travel across prime routes to Vijayawada, Vishakapatnam and Bengaluru from Hyderabad.
Based on the insight on the bookings recorded for the areas, the route from Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam saw an increase of 73 per cent, while the Hyderabad-Bengaluru one saw an increase of 59 per cent and Hyderabad-Vijayawada 54 per cent.
